don't wanna waste love
by ember53608
Summary: adrien pressing their mouths together; marinette their chests; and ladybug and chat noir everything else. [for l0ngl0st.]


This one's for l0ngl0st! May complex introspection coupled with ethereal sex bring the happiest of (late) birthdays to you!

As always, read and review, please!

* * *

She cannot discern the moment when her world shifts, but she knows that it falls somewhere in between a spear being hurtled at her and Adrien taking the blow instead. Her eyes blow wide and she watches the metal shaft push into his skin and bloom again out of his back, all drenched with the red of Shakespearean tragedies. His arms are spread wide and he towers over her before collapsing slowly to the ground, eyes fluttering in the whirl of his rapidly decreasing consciousness. The blood is everywhere - on his stomach, on his back, on his mouth, on his hands - and though Marinette is all of twenty two years old, she has not a single idea of what to do, instead allowing a cry of anguish to peal from her mouth.

His name is on her lips and she almost wails it aloud, almost lets it fall from her lips in the midst of the steadily building crowd but for the sudden press of Volpina's gloved fingers on her lips. The senior Miraculous user mutters a quiet command meant for Tikki to hear and Marinette to follow. "Fu will know what to do," she says resolutely, before grabbing the spear by its end and snapping off near half of its length. All that's left of the weapon is a small fraction, enough to stymie the bleeding and prevent further significant damage. Volpina darts her eyes back to the rooftops, watching intently for a moment as Chloe battles off the still-Akumatized villain; her girlfriend, though once nothing more than a novice, has worked hard over the past few years to develop her skills, and so much so that she can even fend off Marinette in hand-to-hand combat.

Volpina sports a quick nod, then barks to Marinette, "Let's go!"

 _Move, Marinette,_ echoes Tikki. The Kwami can feel the erratic and thundering pulse of her partner's heartbeat everywhere, and it worries her to no end. _Get up,_ she commands, not knowing what else to do. _Get up, get up, get up._

And if only for the guilt that wracks (and has long since) at her ribs, Marinette does. She gets up, and she runs.

 _—_

There are a number of reasons for which she is glad he isn't dead, but of them, Marinette can only think of one: forgiveness. As she watches over him, fingers ghosting through the sun meadows of his hair, she thinks back to their paradox night, the one where everything had become so clear and then so muddied all at once that she had not known how to feel. He'd cornered her against a wall, brushed his thumb against the irremovable polyurethane of her mask, closed his eyes, and breathed her name, _her_ name. Not the one that she was used to donning across the lengths of rooftops or within the zigzagging streets of greater Paris, but the one that he had learned on their first day in kindergarten, _Marinette._ And the pool of anguish and yearning and denial that had built up in her then had been so great that she'd done the most cowardly thing she could ever attest to.

She had run.

Because they weren't the same person, Adrien and Chat Noir. Or at least, she hadn't originally thought so. The former was more of a summer, a fresh wind on the verge of Greek rebirth, a sun that bled not tears but photons of cascading light. And the latter, an autumn: a sweet and sly leaf on the verge of turning red-orange-yellow, a pumpkin flushed whole at the end of the October harvest. They existed on two entirely different planes, and though Marinette knew that she did love the boy, she could not find it in herself to love the cat the same, so love (openly) she did not at all.

Her emotions were confined for eternity to corners of her heart that had leaked out on occasion into her eyes, then caused her to nearly break. And he had seen it all, Adrien had, even past the fibers of his mask. (Sometimes, he had even touched her; feathered a thumb across her cheek as if making a plea,

whispered a finger along her thighs as if answering it.)

"Mari. . ." he murmurs then, groggily. His eyelids flutter again, but with more life this time than the last, and Marinette blinks her eyes to attention. Adrien leans into her fingers, lets the palm of her hand cup his curls. The look on her face is something intangible and he can't quite put a word to it, but he thinks there's relief and a little love mixed into her eyes, so he takes it. Marinette parts her lips, then tilts her head and lets out a sigh. The tears that start to trickle from her eyes are caught in his hand and the flat of his thumb, which he presses to her face. He's surprised when she returns the movement, catching his hand in hers and fitting her cheek to it like his head is to her palm. The soft smile on her face contorts with every second into a deeper, more devastated grimace, and before he knows it, she is crying into his skin, the sobs wracking her body and slicing through him like the spear, only with tenfold the pain.

Adrien smiles wanly and jokes, in an attempt to quiet her, "I guess you do love me, huh?"

"Shut up!" she wails, long and loud, dropping her head into her lap and shaking it from side to side. Her hair comes undone as she drags her fingers through it, but he meets her in the middle and lets his own fingers sift through the tangles before pulling her into his arms. The wound splashed across the plane of his stomach is still in the process of healing, a large, white set of bandages running all over it. He grimaces slightly as she melts into him but makes no indication of it, instead fitting her head into the crook of his neck. He tangles his hands in her hair and breathes in the strawberry banana shampoo she used earlier this morning, murmuring sweet little nothings into the raven locks until she can find in herself some sense of composure.

Marinette's hands rest tentatively on either side of his spine, not entirely spread out, her fingers curling into themselves. Her lips are just whispering along the taught skin of his neck, hot air flying out of her mouth as she slows her sobs. She opens her eyes, settles her gaze on a random spot near the bottom of his nape. He's still writing love into her hair and she doesn't want to tell him to stop, though her mind says she should. For her (heart's) sake, for his sake.

"I don't think I've ever cried like this before," she states instead, not knowing what else there could be to say.

Adrien laughs, then pulls her away from his body so he can look her in the eye. He brushes away the last of her tears with his thumbs; her face is splotched red, her pupils are blown wide, and her hair is stuck to her skin. She looks like (and has already demonstrated) that she is in no way emotionally stable enough to go along with a joke, but alas, he can't help himself. Puns and wisecracks have always been his default, no matter how grim the situation, and he ventures to say, "There's a first time for everything, though, isn't there?"

Marinette narrows her eyes. "I would slap you right now if I could," she says darkly, though he can still find concern laced into her eyes. She roves her gaze over his torso, follows the dull, red outline of his injury behind the bandages. He's propped himself up on his side by concentrating his body weight in his forearm, but the pain of such a motion is indubitably excruciating. In fact, if not for the sight of her, worried, before his eyes, he's not sure he would even be able to breathe. The process of respiration, though not severely impacted by the injury, is still difficult to get through what with his current state. The only thing keeping his eyes open at this point is - though he would never tell her, not if it meant augmenting her already acute anxiety - Marinette herself.

He dips his gaze down to her hands, then back up to her eyes. She's concentrating so hard on impressing his wound into her memory that she doesn't notice until too late that he's alighted his free hand atop one of hers. Marinette jerks her head up, lips parting in surprise at the intimacy despite the earlier embrace. "But you can't," Adrien murmurs, running his thumb over her knuckles. He holds them gently and weighs them in his hands, almost laces their fingers together but for the guarded conflict painted across her face.

"Mari," he says then, and she hates it, because no matter how many times she's told him to just call her 'Marinette', somehow he's always managed to find his way back to this four-letter endearment that gets her heart soaring and her eyes fluttering in spite of her will. "I know," he begins, and she swallows nervously, avoiding his gaze by looking back down into her lap, "I know that you're still angry with me. And I know that you don't think we're the same person, and that you can't love us both.

"But we are," he says. Her heart splits open and so do her lips, but she can't tell if the motions run parallel, especially not when he continues, "I can prove it."

He takes her hand, wraps his fingers around it, then pulls it to his chest, right over his heart. It's steady and slow and she is prompted to wonder all of a sudden why in the span of all these years, she has never kissed him before. He's got full lips and a heart made to match, and she doesn't understand why her head may not ever accept that, only that her own heart does. "I'm the boy," Adrien croaks, edging closer to her face, making sure she's not just looking _at_ him, but _into_ him, "but I'm going to ask you something only the cat would ever dare to -"

He's less than a centimeter away, nose tracing up from her jaw to the teardrop of her upper lip. Marinette sighs, finally lets her fingers unfurl and splay out against him as she closes her eyes and awaits the toppling of the final wall. She's managed to convince herself for so long that the foundations of this are fatally flawed and hence, that it's not worth pursuing. But a moment like this is what makes her wonder, what makes her question: _Wh_ _y wait for it to be fixed? Why throw away all of that time, imperfections aside?_

"- can I have another one of your first times?"

Her mouth opens on instinct and so do her arms, reaching up and around him to tangle in his dusted hair. In his mouth, Marinette tastes salt: the salt of his sweat, of his skin, of his being. He is a sweet and sour mess folded all around her, and she does not know how to breathe, so she swallows inside of him instead. Adrien darts his tongue out, twists it around hers and elicits a moan. He pulls her to him insistently, hands whispering down to her hips and lifting just enough to convey his intentions. Breaking the kiss but for a split-second moment, Marinette stands up from her seat and lifts herself onto the bed, resting herself on his legs before leaning back down to taste him again. The pink sphere of his mouth is foreign territory to her, but she's already discerning the unique geography and noting the places where his taste is the strongest: behind his teeth, under his tongue.

She lets out a cry of protest when he backs away, moving back to his lips so quickly that it startles her. Adrien touches two fingers to her mouth, _wait_ , before feathering a kiss across one of her dimples. It's the same motion from before, when he was cradling her in his arms and pressing pecks to her head, but the feeling of it is different. Marinette feels something _snap_ inside of her, when he touches the spot again, then moves slightly downward. Because he's right, Adrien is. This person in front of her, with the summer-spring eyes and the fresh wheat curls, is the boy she has grown up learning to love. But this soul, the one that is opening her up and filling her steadily to the brim, it is none other than the cat, and that breaks her more than anything -

\- so she starts to cry.

"Mari," he echoes, "Mari, Mari." Adrien alternates between her eyes and her jaw, kissing her tears away one moment and catching them as they fall the next. His movements are so gentle, so subtle, and when he pulls up her shirt all she feels is the initial chill of air, then the warmth of his head buried in her chest. Marinette wonders if it hurts for him to do this; if pulling up from the pillows just to feather kisses to every part of her is a painful thing. The sound of his name finally spilling from her mouth almost answers her question what with the response that it receives: his entire mouth, tongue, teeth, and all, opening up against her sternum and _—_ swallowing.

There are so many thoughts swimming through her head, but all she can think of then is Adrien fumbling with the clasp of her bra and lovingly working her out of the white, cotton material, his hands guiding her arms out from under the straps. His skin is hot and clammy against hers but she still relishes in the exposure, fitting her head into the crook of his neck, closing her eyes, and crying silently over a conflict she cannot understand while he learns her body. He charts a path around each breast first, kissing along the peach-skin swell before coming in to suck on the nipple. His teeth are never involved in the equation but she wants them to be, because if anything, the purpling of crescent moons on her skin will be what convinces her to give in. Marinette has no idea how to approach this situation or its unfortunate duality, but if Adrien does she thinks she may be willing to follow.

She gasps when he growls slightly, laying his mouth out all over her and pulling her into him. "I love you," he rasps, and then he does the same to the other breast, marking it all over with his sweat and saliva until Marinette is not sure that a border exists between him and her. As she sinks further into him, her breaths stretch into gasps stretch into moans, and the pool of uncertainty inside of her ignites into something that she knows she can quell with a single, long, repeated touch. Her fingers are shaking so hard when they come down from his hair; she lands them at his hips and digs in, hoping that the motion can tell what her lips may not be able to (at least not for now).

He's managed to bend over far enough to lap at her navel, an up-and-down movement that grows longer with each ministration. Adrien circles around as much as the pain of his wound will allow, bringing as much of her skin to the touch of his tongue. Marinette is sweet all over, although he imagines there are parts of her even more laced with sugar than the rest, if only he could reach them. He feels her fingers dig into his hip bones, rendered bare by virtue of his medical predicament, and after a brief glance at her, he works her out of her skirt and does away with the bed sheets that still cover his lower half. There's a triangle of the window that's still open to the world because the curtain's folded in on itself, but he doesn't really care if anyone sees them, because he knows they would never understand: that here, in this bed, there are not two people, but four, and that each of them loves the others with more of their soul than can be given a number.

Any semblance of pain rendered a distraction in light of this, he bundles up the remains of his strength and flips them over, lowering Marinette as gently into the pillows before coming back to endear her neck. Her back arches from the planes of her shoulders down to the curve of her hips - _"Adrien"_ \- and she lets out a swan-sound when he barely brushes against her lips. If there are tears still running down her cheeks, she isn't able to register them past the feeling of him sinking into her and filling all of her holes. He's hard and stiff and she _rocks_ against him, her face melting into her pillow as she bucks up into him. The part of him that's more animal than human responds in tandem; he twists above her, she curves underneath, and though "writhing" is not quite the correct word for it, it's the only thing he can think of to put to this scene, what with them exuding their pain and pleasure through every imaginable motion.

Marinette hears his name - the other one - flicker in her head; it's a sultry word and it makes her mouth water because though the boy rests in front of her, the cat works below. Her eyes flutter open hazily, enough to see him holding her hips down and rolling in circles against her core. There's still a coil inside of her that has yet to come undone, and the half of herself that she hasn't even considered yet, the one that matches _him,_ somehow surfaces. Marinette - no, Ladybug - trails a hand down to the seam of the junction and searches, letting flitter a sweet sigh when it catches on something small. Her clit has been aching but it pulses under her fingers and, when he catches onto the motion, under his as well. One of them cries out to the sound of her pain spilling out, or maybe it's his pain pulsing in; she can't quite tell past the sensation of being one person (two hearts, four souls). But she knows that they move together: in a long, trembling circle, their hands and their cores caught up in the tangle of self-discovery and their souls impressed.

Her legs ride up when he shatters inside of her, a hot and pulsing heat coursing through her like a stream. He groans and lets out a shudder of a sigh, then kisses the side of her face not buried in the pillow before beginning to pull out.

"Wait!" Marinette, or Ladybug, or maybe even both, cries. The azure tint to her eyes is flaring and bright beneath him, and he stares, transfixed. "I _—_ I can't _—_ not yet _—_ " If only she could say it, if only her vocal chords, emotionally stripped of any air to work with, could somehow strum together and make the words.

 _(Stay there.)_

The cat bites his lip while the boy leans forward. The girl and the ladybug feel a catch in their breath. "Okay," they all murmur, and then it starts again:

Adrien pressing their mouths together; Marinette their chests; and Ladybug and Chat Noir everything else.

 _—_

They remember reading somewhere that 'it hurts to become'. They take it to mean that self-discovery is a process involving more than just 'once'.

With each breath-backed thrust they crack a new shell and the way that shell breaks is so beautiful and divine that it tempts them towards more. Her trembles under him evolve into stretches and longing and flexibility; his cloud of emotion crescendos into thunder and lighting and rain. Their halves melt in every combination thought possible, a lascivious yet luminescent pool of the four Greek loves. And though they enter each other with souls broken anew,

they end it each time with hearts that hold true.

* * *

I apologize for being such a pussy and ending this fic on a rhyme. Unfortunately, I cannot help myself.

 _ **' E**_


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